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Here is a graph showing how well or bad is performing each of the major racing franchise in retail lately. This comparison is for racing genre at large so needless to point out the difference between racing simulator and arcade racing. This graph is only to see the trend in the major racing franchises of the Big 3.

A few comment on this:

- After the huge drop between MK7 and MK8, due mostly to the low userbase the Wii U had, Mario Kart franchise seems to be on the right track to reach once again 15M+ numbers, quite a feat considering MK8D is an enhanced port. This latest entry in the franchise will continue charting in the top 10 for a long time again given there is no indication a MK9 will be released anytime soon. I won't be surprised to see it reached 20M at some point.

- For the past 10 years or so, GT franchise is on a downhill saleswise. GTS, the latest entry, barely managed so far to sell as much as GT6 did, which was released at the end of PS3 lifecycle when all eyes were on the PS4. 29 weeks after its release, GTS is not charting well either, being currently at no. 61 in the global weekly chart. The only possible way of reversing this trend would be to release GT7 on PS5 since a late release in PS4's lifecycle would imply low numbers as well.

- Releasing a new Forza every year is not helping the franchise doing great numbers. When Forza titles were released every two years, sales were averaging 5M while now sales of each title are averaging 2M. Sure the userbase of the X1 is not helping either.

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Nintendo is playing things smart by only releasing one Mario Kart on each of their consoles, although it'll be interesting to see if Switch is going to change things since the one it has is essentially just an update port.

Gran Turismo on the other hand is a prime example of a mishandled property, which is actually quite unusual for Sony. The series seemed to have lost a lot of steam when GT5 took such a long time to come out, and then the following releases have never really gotten the spotlight put on them like the earlier games did.

Forza needs to pace out their releases better. Releasing new game every single year seems to be causing a lot of fatigue and lack of excitement in fans.

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This chart makes the situation seem a bit worse than it actually is, since the chart is retail only. Console digital continues to go up and accounts for around 40% of console software sales now on average.

Just as a for instance, the chart has Forza Horizon 3 at around 3.5m, but the game has been played by over 9 million people. Of course players doesn't equal sales, due to rentals, multiple users on one Xbox playing the same copy of the game, etc., but I'd bet that sales including digital are over 5.5m for Forza Horizon 3 now.